Modeling Photoionized Turbulent Material in the Circumgalactic Medium. III. Effects of Corotation and Magnetic Fields

Abstract

Abstract Absorption-line measurements of the circumgalactic medium (CGM) display a highly nonuniform distribution of lower ionization state species accompanied by more widespread higher ionization state material. This suggests that the CGM is a dynamic, multiphase medium, such as arises in the presence of turbulence. To better understand this evolution, we perform hydrodynamic and magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations of the CGM surrounding Milky Way–like galaxies. In both cases, the CGM is initially in hydrostatic balance in a 1012 M ⊙ dark matter gravitational potential, and the simulations include rotation in the inner halo and turbulence that decreases radially. They also track ionizations, recombinations, and species-by-species radiative cooling in the presence of the redshift-zero UV background, employing the MAIHEM nonequilibrium chemistry package. We find that after 9 Gyr of evolution, the presence of a magnetic field leads to an overall hotter CGM, with cool gas in the center where magnetic pressure dominates. While the non-MHD run produces more cold clouds overall, we find similar Si iv/O vi and N v/O vi ratios between the MHD and non-MHD runs, which are both very different from their equilibrium values. The non-MHD halo develops cool, low angular momentum filaments above the central disk, in comparison to the MHD run that has more efficient angular momentum transport, especially for the cold gas, which forms a more ordered and extended disk late into its evolution.